The Sapling

Download The Sapling a short simulation game where you design your own plants and animals, and put them in a world together. Or you turn on random mutations, and see what evolution does to your ecosystem!

Overview of The Sapling

The Sapling is a sandbox game, so there is no one right way to play it. You can start by creating a few basic plants and animals, and then see how they grow over time. You can also experiment with different settings, such as the size of the world, the amount of sunlight, and the temperature.

The Sapling Gameplay

Design algae and plants

Whether you want a small flower that glows in the dark, black algae specialized for planets without a lot of sunlight, or a forest of giant trees covered in spikes, it's up to you.

Design aquatic, land, and flying animals.

Want a brightly colored fish that drags itself onto land to hide its eggs in burrows? Or perhaps a land animal that gives birth to live young and quickly runs from flower to flower to drink nectar? Or what about a flying carnivore specialized for diving and catching its prey underwater? Again, it's up to you.

Scenarios: learn the simulation step by step

While the simulation in this game can be deep and complex, it's introduced to the player step by step; it never becomes overwhelming. Each scenario tasks you to build an ecosystem that meets specific requirements and introduces a small number of new concepts.

Sandbox: build your planet

The sandbox offers the same functionality as the scenarios (but, obviously, with everything unlocked), but also much more: play with the procedural planet generator to get the same planet you want, whether it's a desert world, an underwater world, or whatever you come up with.

It even allows you to define up to 8 seasons to spice that ecosystem up a little. While playing, you can continue to change things: the next ice age is always only a few clicks away.

Turn on random mutations and see what evolution does with your ecosystem

The most exciting feature of the sandbox, at least according to solo dev Wessel Stoop, is random mutations.

See your algae, plants, and animals evolve to quickly fill available niches, see how some species are outcompeted immediately while others bloom for thousands of years... only to die out when their food source evolves a new trick to escape, and a completely different clade jumps in the now vacant niche.

Key Features of The Sapling

• Design plants and animals.
• Fast-forward time to watch the ecosystem work like a charm or slowly fall apart (probably the latter :) ).
• A sandbox mode where you can skip time and turn on random mutation, allowing true evolution.
• An instinct system where you can specify what an animal should do when it hears or sees something.
• A procedural animation system so any animal can perform any animation.
• Procedural music mixed on the fly.
• Everything is set up to be easily extended by players.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: A processor with SSE2 instruction set support
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities.
• DirectX: Version 10
• Storage: 150 MB available space

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: A processor with SSE2 instruction set support
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities.
• DirectX: Version 10
• Storage: 150 MB available space